Blockchain for digital ad tracking

Digital advertising is on track to account for 44% of global ad spend this year. But the sector is fraught with data discrepancies and inefficiencies. This opened the door for bad actors to emerge with the intention of taking a more significant share of the revenue pie than they deserved. Lucidity is addressing these issues by rolling out a blockchain solution to provide an immutable data source for campaign tracking.

The original promise of digital advertising was precise measurement with detailed data. The problem is there are so many players involved in an ad campaign, each with their own technologies, that the advertiser ends up with a lack of transparency. The ecosystem includes ad servers, exchanges, and ad networks. Additionally, to make sense if it all there are data management platforms (DMP) and demand-side platforms (DSP) intended to provide the buyer with a single user interface covering all exchanges.

In their recent announcement, Sam Kim, Lucidity’s CEO and Co-founder, stated, “Our vision is to bring total, indisputable transparency to the digital advertising supply chain. We are inviting partners to join us so the honest players in our industry can get the benefits they deserve.”

The blockchain provides a decentralized system that verifies a single, auditable set of data analytics for all stakeholders in a digital ad campaign. The intention is to enable partners to build apps and solutions on top of the protocol.

Currently, the company is the only blockchain-based ad solution in which partners aren’t mandated to initiate significant workflow adjustments. The solution is easy: they merely install a tracker.

The CEO continued, “we’re not just a whitepaper, and we’re excited to bring a tried and tested product to market so the advertising industry can finally transact with trust.” Not only have they completed beta testing but Lucidity also hasn’t launched an ICO.

Technology

The company is a member of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. They’ve implemented Plasma, a side-chain solution intended to solve Ethereum’s scaling and speed issues. The company claims that it can process millions of transactions per second.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and Bitcoin Lightning co-creator Joseph Poon created Plasma. However, it’s going through some fundamental design changes, and Buterin announced a major one last month.

Conclusion

The protocol sounds interesting, particularly because of the low friction tracker. However, for blockchain solutions, the ability to bring partners on board is as important as the technology. Only time will tell whether Lucidity manages to get the adoption they need.